With the advancement of chemistry and its associated industries there is an increased need to control manufacturing processes for the filling and emptying of tanks and containers with multiple medias, such as fluids, gases and slurries of various materials. There is not only a requirement for volume determinations, but a requirement for re-identifying the material itself.
It has been a common practice in these industries to control processes manually, both as to volumes delivered and the rates of flow. This has proven to be not only expensive in cost, but also inefficient in the use of materials. This manual approach has been proven to be inadequate and unreliable as the skill and attention of the operators may vary considerably.
The need for an improved detection apparatus will be found in many applications where batch, or unit processing, of fluids is required, such as in the petrochemical industry. Other applications exist in commercial laundries, cosmetic laboratories, diesel engines, and diesel fuel distributing systems to name a few.